Being Prioritized
March 4th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: Being Prioritized :: Being Prioritized :: Claim 1 :: Being Prioritized
Joseph Polanik wrote:
> >Eternal skepticism is the enevitable and unavoidable result *if*
> >being-inside is prioritized over being-alongside.
>
> okay, perhaps you have clarified the conditions under which the alleged
> double-bind takes place; but, you haven’t proven that all philosophers
> who prioritize being-inside over being-alongside will fail either by
> questioning as deeply as Descartes and Husserl or by not questioning as
> deeply as Descartes and Husserl.
>
> what is the criteria by which you say those who fail to question as
> deeply as Descartes and Husserl fail as philosophers? surely it is not
> some measure of whether they agree with Heidegger?
I didn’t say that they fail as philosophers. I said that they fail
specifically with regard to explicating the being of beings, because
they end up denying the very being of beings (in their sense of being as
being-in). Assuming you don’t think that Descartes’ argument for God’s
existence works, then Descartes has no way to get from the ego Cogito
back to the being of the world. As for Husserl, he himself explicitly
called his philosophy transcendental subjectivity.
As for philosophers who fail to question as deeply as Descartes and
Husserl, the point is that they *fail* to question as deeply as them. I
would include, for example, John Locke in that category, whose
philosophy was easily reduced to total idealism by Berkeley only 10
years later.
> >Heidegger isn’t talking about developmental or temporal priority when
> >he prioritizes “they” over “I”. He’s talking about phenomenological
> >priority. A *mature* human spends most of the day coasting along acting
> >according to what “everyone” agrees to, thinking what “everyone” says
> >about things, reading what “they” read, etc. When walking past a car,
> >even if no individual is around, it’s still “someone’s” car - that’s
> >integral to the very identity of the car as a car in the first place.
> >So the THEY is first and foremost, and the “I” appears only upon
> >analytical reflection and removal from everyday acting.
>
> I mostly agree with your description of the phenomenology of the average
> ‘mature’ individual; but, I would only give this ‘phenomenological
> priority’ if I was doing some sort of phenomenological anthropology for,
> say, the Animal Planet cabel channel where they have frequent
> documentaries of the everyday life and behavior of various non-human
> primates.
>
> the very fact that reflective self-awareness is both rare and (so far as
> we know) uniquely human, makes it intensely interesting to philosophers;
> and, I see no reason why they should not begin with this phenomenon
> rather than with a sociological or anthropological view of a human
> community.
I would propose the reason I give above - if we give philosophical
priority to the phenomenon of reflexive self-awareness, we end up
precisely where Husserlian and Cartesian philosophy (despite his attempt
to “prove” God’s existence) ended up - solipsism, and ultimately idealism.
> in any case, unless Heidegger has somehow banned asking ‘what am I?’,
> one simply must de-prioritize being-alongside. it is not capable of
> addressing that question in the sense in which it is the first-person
> analogue of the question ‘what is the structure of a human individual?’.
Giving philosophical priority to the first-person analogue of that
question presupposes the priority of being-inside in the first place (I
as opposed to you as opposed to he/she/it), so your reply simply assumes
the consequent.
> as noted in an earlier post, if I translate some of Heidegger’s
> statements into the first person, I get something like “I am myself this
> entity” or, more simply, “I am *this*” — the awareness that prompts
> the next question: how do I determine that I, this entity that I myself
> am, am a dasein instead of a mind, spirit, soul, a group of neurons, a
> quantum phenomenon or whatever?
>
> the phenomenological anthropology that results from prioritizing
> being-alongside doesn’t seem to address this question.
The prioritization of being-alongside necessitates the subordination of
Dasein as mind, spirit, soul, a group of neurons. As for the question of
why the latter subordination, see above regarding the idealistic results
of being-inside.
